by Liliana Hart
I put my knee in his back like I’d seen the cops do and then I realized I was practically straddling Elmer while buck-ass naked.
“I need restraints,” I called out. But Rosemarie and Scarlet didn’t come out of the bushes.
“What are you doing?” Elmer said. “I’m not into the kinky stuff. I’m too old. I’ve got a pacemaker.”
“I told you to hush,” I said. “Elmer Hughes, you should’ve kept the tattoo hidden a little longer. Like until you died. Or should I call you the Romeo Bandit?”
He went still beneath me and I grabbed his other arm to pull behind his back. “Rosemarie,” I called out a little louder this time. “I’m not playing. I need the restraints.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elmer said. “But I demand that you unhand me. I’m a paying member of this resort and they have rules here. You’re sexually assaulting me, you reprobate. It’s wrong to take advantage of a senior citizen just because his plumbing still works.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “Rosemarie!” I yelled louder. “If you don’t get out here right now I’m never watching Real Housewives with you again.”
“I sent Rosemarie and Scarlet down to the luau,” Savage said, stepping out from the shadows, a big smile on his face.
“Oh, Jesus God,” I said, letting go of Elmer and slapping my hand over my eyes. I felt Elmer roll away from me and get up, but then I heard a couple of grunts and peeked through my fingers to see Elmer back on the ground with cuffs around his wrists.
“What are you doing?” Savage asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I panicked. I thought you were naked and I couldn’t handle it.”
He laughed out loud and I felt ridiculous all of a sudden. And then I remembered I was the one that was naked. Savage had on jeans and a t-shirt and his gun.
“I’m not sure I can handle it,” he said, his voice deepening. “I’ve got to tell you I’ve had a lot of fantasies that involved this moment.”
“You had fantasies about us at a nudist colony?”
“No, just about us being naked. Together.”
I had a hot flash and started waving my hand in front of my face. “You can’t do this. We had a truce.”
“That was before I saw you naked. And Addison, the fantasies don’t measure up to the reality.”
“Nope, nope, nope. I’m not listening.” I stuck my fingers in my ears like a toddler and tried not to pay attention to the fact that my nipples had hardened like tiny pebbles.
“You’re very good at this,” Elmer told Savage. “Nice technique.”
“Thank you,” Savage said. “Elmer Hughes, you’re under arrest for the murder of twenty-two people, plus committing multiple armed robberies as the Romeo Bandit.”
“I’d rather you just shoot me if you don’t mind. I’m not a fan of prison.”
“I wouldn’t mind putting a bullet in you,” Scarlet said, coming out of the shadows and up on the deck to stand over Elmer.
“Jesus,” Savage said, looking at Scarlet in her full glory. His gaze seemed to be fixed on the hot-pink pubic hair, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. It was mesmerizing.
“Scarlet?” Elmer asked. “What the hell do you want to put a bullet in me for? We’re neighbors. I thought you were just a desperate old lady.”
“I’ve never been desperate. Not even when you seduced me the first time. I almost cut you loose back then when you started talking about your wife. Really killed the mood. But you made up for it later. I have to say you were one of the best.”
“Of course I was. Still am. You can’t possibly be that Scarlet. She was one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seduced. There was no one comparable to her in bed.”
“Yes, I know. And I’ve hardly changed at all, so I don’t appreciate your insults.”
Savage and I shared a look that said it all. Scarlet was delusional. And this was ridiculous. Three-fourths of us were naked and I was kind of tired of being at the naked party.
“After all these years you’re getting just what you deserve,” Scarlet said. “You might be a charming Romeo, but you’re still a killer. And you still have to pay.” She turned to Savage and said, “Maybe you could rough him up a little on the way in. Say he resisted or something.”
“He’s an old man,” Savage said. “He has to pee every ten minutes. That’s punishment enough.”
“I want to go home now. And I want to wear clothes,” I said. “I also want my reward money so I can buy some new shoes. This has been a trying twenty-four hours.”
“You’re welcome to come back with me,” Savage said. “We can drop Elmer in for booking and then hit the outlet mall on the way back to Savannah.”
“You’re a good friend,” I said.
Savage raised a brow and the smile he gave me sent a shiver all the way to my lady bits. “The clothing part is optional,” he said.
Decisions, decisions.
The End
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Saturday…
There are some days it’s not worth getting out of bed. Today was one of those days.
Sirens blared in the distance, but between tourist traffic and people generally being assholes and not moving to the side of the road for emergency responders, I figured the cops still had a good five minutes before they got here.
A hysterical woman was Skyping with someone from Channel 8 News, reporting that shots had been fired at the Enmark Gas Station off Montgomery Street. Rosemarie and I had pulled up just in time to see the woman put on fresh lipstick and practice a couple of sobs before dialing into the station.
Over the last several years, Savannah’s crime had spiked. Shootings and domestic disturbance calls were always going out over the radio. And this was the third gas station robbery this week. The cops were doing everything they could to keep things under control, but like with most things, when politicians got involved everything went down the shitter. So while the cops worked with their hands halfway tied behind their backs and buried in mountains of red tape, dodging bullets and putting their lives in danger, the rest of us got to watch the city burn. So to speak.
Shots rang out from inside the gas station and everyone hit the deck, myself included.
“Shoot that motherfucker!” Rosemarie screamed, a hysterical tinge to her voice.
We huddled behind the open doors of her bright yellow Beetle. On her best day, Rosemarie didn’t do well in stressful situations. She’d shown up at the detective agency about half an hour ago, her mascara smudged from the night before and her bright red dress turned inside out. Her hair looked like she’d brushed it with a hand mixer, and I was almost a hundred percent sure she wasn’t wearing a bra. Using the deductive reasoning skills I’d acquired over the two months I’d been a private investigator, I was willing to go out on a limb and say today was nowhere near one of her “best days.”
“Ssh,” I hissed. “You don’t want to startle him into killing anyone.”
“He’s killing everyone. Didn’t you just hear him unloading on all those poor people? They’re just trying to get their gas station Danishes and fill up their tanks for a nice weekend away. And now they’re all going to die.” Rosemarie inhaled a deep breath and let out a hee-hee-hoo like she was in Lamaze class. Rosemarie was a little excitable.
“He’s not killing everyone. He just fired a bunch of rounds into the ceiling. Kid can’t be more than twenty. Looks scared to death.”
“America’s youth today,” she said, shaking her head. “Be glad you’re not teaching anymore. Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket. I had a kid tell me the other day that Disney invented Pocahontas because they needed a Native American princess, and that she wasn’t a real person like Wikipedia claimed. Took everything I had not to slap him right upside the head. In two years he’s probably going to be holding up a gas station too. And what is that boy wearing? He’s robbing a gas station convenience store in his pa
jama pants? And plaid pajamas at that. I hate to break it to him, but he looks like the Brawny lumberjack instead of a badass.”
“Maybe he thought the wife beater and bandana tied around his head made him look tough enough.”
“You’d think they’d have some kind of online classes for thugs,” she said. “They’ve got online classes for just about everything these days. Some enterprising young man could monetize the site and probably make a fortune off all the gangbangers and lowlifes, teaching them how to commit crime more efficiently.”
“I’m sure the Better Business Bureau would love that,” I said dryly.
“Are you going to shoot him or not? I’m starting to get a cramp and I need a fucking donut.”
“You sure are swearing a lot today. That’s not like you.”
“I’ve been watching marathons of Mad Men. It’s a bad influence on my social niceties.”
“I can’t shoot anyone,” I said. “I left my gun in the shower caddy at the office.”
For the last week, I’d been calling the McClean Detective Agency my home. I’d been living with Nick Dempsey for several months before he decided to ask me to marry him and threw a wrench in the works. I’ll admit I panicked. A girl who’s been left at the altar doesn’t think about marriage and weddings without fear rearing its ugly head. I thought I’d been very mature when I told him I needed time to think on it, and that maybe it was best if we gave each other a little space while I did.
In reality, I’d been avoiding Nick like the plague. Our lines of work often put us in each other’s paths, but I had Nick radar. I could practically feel his presence before he ever arrived at a scene. I could also feel his presence because I’d stuck one of the trackers we used at the agency underneath his truck. My phone vibrated every time he was in a ten-mile radius.
It was really hard to give myself the space I needed to make an informed, adult decision. I knew what that man could do in bed, and my hormones weren’t as informed and adult as my brain was.
“We’re all going to die,” Rosemarie said. “Help me, Jesus. Help me!” She threw in a sign of the cross for good measure. Rosemarie was Methodist just like I was, but I figured God might give her extra points for effort.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I mumbled under my breath. Then I reached into the car and grabbed the box of donuts we’d just procured when the call for the robbery had come through on the police scanner. I slid the box toward Rosemarie and she huddled behind the door, her blue eyes wide and round like a Kewpie doll, as she devoured a chocolate glazed.
I still wasn’t sure why Rosemarie had a police scanner in her car. Or where she’d gotten it, for that matter. Rosemarie taught choir at James Madison High School in Whiskey Bayou, but ever since I’d gotten my P.I. license she liked to think of us as the Southern version of Cagney and Lacey, even though she had no special training and had a tendency to overreact in high stress situations. In reality, we were more like a deranged Abbott and Costello.
“I’m just saying,” Rosemarie said, reaching for another donut, “what good is a gun if you’re going to leave it in the shower? I’ve got mine right under the front seat of the car. You can use it if you want to.”
“I’ll pass,” I said. “The police will be here soon.” Not to mention the fact that I was pretty sure Rosemarie didn’t have a concealed carry permit. But that didn’t stop ninety percent of the Georgia population from carrying them anyway. Southerners weren’t fond of things like permits.
“Why do you take your gun in the shower anyway?” she asked.
“I take my gun everywhere,” I said, peeping around the car door to look inside the gas station so I could assess the situation. The more information I could give the cops when they arrived the better. “But I wasn’t expecting you to use the spare key and disarm the agency alarms while I was trying to put my clothes on. And I sure wasn’t expecting you to burst into the bathroom and drag me half-naked down the hall because you were having a crisis. So it got left in the shower caddy.”
“I needed a donut,” she said, pouting a little. “I had a rough night. I thought Robbie might be the one. After Leroy broke my heart I did what I read in Cosmo and had a couple of rebound flings. Then I met Robbie and my world tilted on its axis and all thoughts of Leroy went right out the window. I thought that was a sign that I’d found the one. And it was my first attempt at being a cougar.”
“Who’s Robbie?” I asked.
“He’s that bartender we met last week at the nudist colony.”
“Don’t remind me,” I groaned.
A week ago, I’d caught my first and last case that involved going undercover at a nudist colony. The experience had taught me a lot about myself. Mostly that I wasn’t meant to be naked at the beach. There were parts of the body that shouldn’t be exposed to sand and sun. I’d also discovered that I didn’t particularly want to see other people naked either. There was nothing quite like watching the woman across the dinner table as her nipple fell into her soup bowl every time she leaned forward.
“You thought Robbie was the one?” I asked, perplexed. “You hadn’t talked to him five minutes before y’all were going at it behind the tiki bar. How are you supposed to know someone’s the one after five minutes? And three and a half of that was foreplay.”
Rosemarie sniffed. “Sometimes souls just connect. It was like that for me and Robbie. But being at a nudist colony really takes away the subtleties of flirtation. I could see everything he was thinking below his waist. It’s hard not to fall for such blatant seduction techniques.”
“I take it Robbie doesn’t share your soulmate sensibilities?”
“Robbie graduated from high school last year and still lives with his parents. They all live full-time at the nudist colony. He’s not sure about working and living out in the real world. He said he likes the freedom of the nudist lifestyle and he’ll miss his mother’s chocolate chip cookies if he moves away from her.”
“Jesus,” I said, eyes wide. “He’s practically an infant. Men don’t know anything about pleasing women at that age.”
Rosemarie frowned and said, “I’ve slept with a lot of men. I’m not sure I’ve ever found one that knew how to please me. I think it’s a myth. Like unicorns. Or that picture that went viral on Facebook about the man with two penises. Anyone could see that second one was Photoshopped.”
“Men that know how to please women exist,” I said glumly.
I knew this because I’d just told one I had to think about an eternity of receiving pleasure. I was an idiot. I looked at Rosemarie and felt indignation rise up within me that none of her partners had been interested in anything but their own pleasure.
“You’re a woman in the prime of your life,” I told her. “What you need is a real man. An older man. Someone who knows how to treat you outside the bedroom and rock your world inside it. Maybe a widower or a divorcee.”
“Where do you think I can find one of those?” she asked, intrigued. “Assisted living? Or maybe that retirement village down on Tybee Island? They’re real go getters down there.”
I didn’t really have a solution. Indignation was about as far as I could take this particular problem. “Have you tried one of the online dating sites?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve got profiles on all of them. Everyone lies about who they are and what they look like, and when you finally meet in person you know you’re only meeting for a quick hookup, so no one much cares about the lies anyway.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, my faith in humanity slightly dented. “They always show those people getting married and so happy on the commercials.”
“I think mostly they’re happy they’re getting regular sex and didn’t marry a serial killer. Those computer programs are pretty good at screening out most of the crazies. At least the ones that might kill you.”
“Huh,” I said and turned my attention back to the gas station. No more shots had been fired and the sirens were getting closer. I took a deep breath and peeked around the
side of the door so I could look into the gas station one more time.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been mentally preparing myself to see. I was past thirty, so it was understandable that my eyes might not have been as good as they once were. In fact, I was praying that was the case. There had to be a thousand or so ninety-something women who wore fur coats over their velour jogging suits. There was no reason to think that my Aunt Scarlet was inside the gas station with an armed robber. She was supposed to be halfway to Italy on a singles cruise.
I peeped again and sighed. My eyesight was spectacular. And there was no mistaking Aunt Scarlet.
“Hey,” Rosemarie said, coming back to rational behavior as the sugar hit her bloodstream. “That looks just like Scarlet. I thought she was headed out on a single’s cruise.”
“That was the plan,” I said. “Maybe it’s not her.”
It was her. There was no mistaking Aunt Scarlet. In her prime, people said that Scarlet looked just like Ava Gardner. I’d seen pictures, so I knew the rumors to be true. I’m not sure what had happened as the years passed, but Ava Gardner started looking more like Mickey Rooney. She’d shrunk, so she was barely five-feet tall, and she had a shock of white hair she kept permed and teased so it added a couple inches to her height. She kept it shellacked so nothing less than hurricane-force winds could move it out of place. She was wearing a mink, floor-length coat that swallowed her and she looked mad as hell.
Scarlet Holmes was my father’s aunt. She’d grown up in Whiskey Bayou and outlived five husbands, a couple we weren’t so sure had died of natural causes. Most families had a skeleton or two in the closet. Scarlet was one of ours. She liked her men young, her whiskey neat, and her cigarette’s unfiltered.
“Thank you. I feel better now,” Rosemarie said, pushing the half empty box of donuts back toward me. “It’s the stress. It makes me irrational. I’ve got a new game plan now. I won’t even look at a man unless he’s on the sunny side of sixty. Maybe Scarlet knows someone.”